The Entity Below the Stone

Long ago, before the Council’s rise and before even the Bloodlines fractured…

The cavern was silent but alive—breathing shadows across stone carved in tongues long forgotten. Evelyn knelt before the altar, her palms bloodied from the rites, her lips trembling with the ancient words she barely understood but had memorized with sacred precision. Her breath frosted in the damp, pulsing air. The silence had teeth here. Hunger. Power.

“You come seeking what does not belong to mortals,” the voice finally echoed, neither male nor female, but infinite. It scraped at her bones, yet wrapped her in something sinfully soft.

“I seek justice,” Evelyn whispered. “And vengeance. Power enough to make them pay.”

“At what cost, child of ash and blood?”

“Whatever it takes.”

The shadows peeled themselves from the walls. A figure stepped forth—faceless, limbless in any true form, and yet it moved like smoke and moonlight. Ancient. Terrible.

“Then we shall bind,” it said. “You shall carry My will in your blood. My whispers in your mind. And when the time comes… you will return what was borrowed.”

A blade of obsidian hovered between them. She hesitated—but not for long. She sliced her palm open and let her blood drip onto the altar. The cavern shuddered.

And Evelyn was no longer just Evelyn.

⸻

Present Day – Council Sanctum

The sanctum pulsed with unstable energy. Cracks flickered in the marble as the remnants of the ancient magic Evelyn had brought into the heart of the realm began to stir. Althea stood still, her skin glowing faintly as if echoing the bond’s resonance with her mates. Cassian and Xanden stood flanking her protectively, both still glowing with residual light from their reunion.

“What in the stars have you done, Evelyn?” one of the elder council members gasped.

But Evelyn only smiled. Tired. Tragic.

“I made a promise. Long before you locked your doors and cloaked yourselves in self-righteousness. And now the debt comes due.”

“You bargained with the Hollow One,” another whispered in dread.

“The Hollow One chose me,” Evelyn corrected. “Because I was the only one willing to act when you cowards turned a blind eye.”

Cassian stepped forward. “What is it she brought with her?”

Althea’s magic brushed against the air like a wind sniffing for poison. “Not just an entity,” she said quietly. “A tether. A gate. Evelyn isn’t just a key… she’s a door.”

And the door had begun to open.

The lights in the chamber flickered as a wind howled through the sealed sanctum. Statues cracked. Runes glowed. And deep beneath their feet… something ancient awakened.

Not evil.

Not good.

Just old.

Older than their magic. Older than their politics. Something that remembered the first breath of the world.

Althea turned toward her mates. “If we don’t stop it—if we don’t control the breach—this realm will collapse into itself.”

Evelyn’s face twisted with grief. “I didn’t mean for this…”

“But it’s too late now,” Xanden said grimly, drawing his blade—his power already gathering like lightning.

Cassian’s fire crackled to life beside him. “Then let’s fix it. Together.”

The sanctum groaned, and a jagged black rift split across the council floor.

The final war wasn’t coming.

It had already begun.

The walls of the sanctum trembled—low at first, like a distant growl, then building into a deafening roar that shattered the stillness. Althea’s scream was drowned by the sonic pulse of magic rupturing through the seal. The air thickened, pulling at their skin, their lungs. A dark mist spilled from the broken glyphs at their feet, alive with shadows that slithered and whispered.

Cassian drew his blade, even though he knew it would be useless.

“No—no, no, no!” Evelyn whispered, backing away from the exposed runes. “This isn’t what was supposed to happen!”

The ground split with a violent quake. From the fracture rose the being that should have never stirred—its form barely tangible, ancient and wrong, cloaked in fractured time and starless void.

Althea gritted her teeth, reaching instinctively for the bond she shared with her mates, drawing on the magic they had only begun to understand. “Protect the seal!” she shouted.

Too late.

The entity let out a screech that scraped against the mind like broken glass. Xanden leapt in front of her without hesitation, casting a barrier of radiant light—but the force of the blast hurled him backward like a ragdoll, his body crashing into the far wall with a sickening thud.

“XANDEN!” Cassian roared.

Althea collapsed beside him, hands trembling as she cupped his bloodied face. He was unconscious, his pulse faint. Magic pulsed wildly in his veins, reacting to the ancient one’s presence, trying to protect him—but failing. His breath hitched and stopped, only to gasp again shallowly. A coma. A magical stasis forced by the trauma.

Cassian dropped to his knees, fury and grief warring in his eyes. “We have to get him out. Now.”

The entity had not followed—it remained, slowly coalescing, watching them with unknowable eyes. It did not pursue because it knew.

This was only the beginning.

Althea and Cassian transported Xanden back through the portal, the taste of failure heavy in their mouths. Their victory had come at a cost—and the true enemy had only just awakened.